The Victorian Gothic Collection Boxed Set 1-3

by Chasity Bowlin

  There was no peace or privacy to be had anywhere at Cysgod Lys. But telling her that would only frighten her. Instead, he simply kept his mouth shut, folded his newspaper and rose to depart. “Enjoy your breakfast, Adelaide. I will see you this afternoon.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In New York, Adelaide had never been idle. Shopping, the library, some new attraction or entertainment, or even the work she had done for the poor had always kept her busy. But hours of nothingness stretched before her and with her own thoughts such a confusion and anxiety inspiring jumble, she desperately needed a task.

  With that in mind, she set out in search of Tromley. She found him in the small orangery that was located just beyond a rather grandiose morning room. He was cutting roses, likely for the dining room table. It was typically a task assigned to gardeners, but from the careful way he had and the delicate touch with which he treated those fragile blooms, it was clearly a task he enjoyed.

  “Those are lovely,” Adelaide said, complimenting a startlingly white blossom. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a bright and unadulteratedly white rose before.”

  The butler smiled, clearly proud. “The gardens are the purveyance of Mr. Erskin. But these lovelies are mine. I have propagated them in just such a manner that they are beyond equal. It is prideful and vain to say so, but I cannot be sorry for it. Was there something you required, Miss Hampton Parke?”

  “A task, Tromley. I need something with which to occupy either my hands or my mind. If both remain idle I shall go mad.”

  His smile faded instantly. “Those are not words that should be spoken in jest, miss. But if it is a task you need, have you no sewing or painting to keep you occupied?”

  “I do not. I’ve never had a knack for drawing or painting. And all of my sewing notions and supplies… well, they are gone, Mr. Tromley, and I didn’t think to see them replaced before my journey here.” Adelaide took a deep breath and then did something she had never in her life. She apologized to a servant. “I am terribly sorry, Tromley. I spoke thoughtlessly and it was not my intent to offend.”

  “I am not offended, miss. Only concerned. You have been through an ordeal and this place… this house, can sometimes take even the most rational of minds under some strange and unbreakable spell. If ever you find yourself frightened or if you begin doubt what is real about you, I hope that you will seek me out.”

  “You… but not his lordship?” Adelaide queried.

  “He is a very rational man. He has made himself that way… to hear anything that might sound irrational would be very distressing for him,” the butler continued. There was a wealth of meaning in those words, both in what was said and in what remained unsaid. “It is my duty and my pleasure in life to keep this house and his lordship’s life, as much as it is my ability to do so, running as smoothly as possible. You will come to me, miss, if you ever need reassurance of what is real and what is not?”

  It was quite possibly the strangest conversation Adelaide had ever had with anyone, servant or peer. But she found herself nodding just the same. “I will, Tromley. But I am very rationally minded, as well.” Until shadows pitch and move in my room in the darkest hours of the night. Regardless, Adelaide had made a decision on that score. Shadows would not harm her, but if she allowed them to terrorize her, it might well drive her to run and in the course come to unintended harm. She would take a page from his lordship’s book and ignore it. “I do not think there will be any difficulties there… Is there sewing to be done then?”

  His smile returned. “In a house of this size, there is always sewing to be done. But most of it is beneath your dignity and your station, miss.”

  “I will sew rags together for a beggar’s quilt, Tromley, if it will but give me something to do. Please.”

  He nodded. “Do you wish your task to take place in your chambers or in the morning room? Or perhaps the small sitting room just off from where you broke your fast with Lord Llewellyn?”

  “I think the small sitting room. I have not yet had a chance to explore that area of the house and I’d like to soak up some of the sunshine this grand morning. I’ll go there now and await my mending,” she replied.

  Leaving the butler, Adelaide found her way back to the breakfast room and to the small sitting room just off it. The walls were papered in a soft yellow damask, faded to the color of butter. An aged Aubusson carpet in shades of cream, blue and gold covered the intricately patterned parquet floors, and two walls of the corner room were lined with windows draped in faded blue velvet. The impossibly wide mantle, which extended almost the width of one wall, was lined with figurines of shepherdesses and ormolu vases and a clock. She supposed that in a room with so many windows a large hearth would be a requirement to combat the chill.

  The sofas and chairs were a mix of styles from various centuries with each upholstered in the room’s very relaxing and very French color palette. But Adelaide didn’t seat herself immediately. Instead, she crossed to the wide bank of windows and looked out over the sloping parkland. She could just see the sea beyond. With mountains to the north, the sea to the west and that dreadful moor to the south, Cysgod Lys was surrounded on all sides by wonders of nature, though some were much more pleasant than others.

  There must have been some sort of drop off at the water’s edge, for she could not see the crashing waves as they met the sandy shore. It was just deceptively still waters as far as the eye could see. The memories enveloped her—people screaming and running as they made for the decks, the terrible disorientation as the ship listed first to one side and then the other, the pandemonium on the decks as they failed to launch all but two of the lifeboats, and the horror as one of them broke apart before it even touched the water.

  But it wasn’t just the memories of the event itself. There were very tactile sensations like the bitterly cold water creeping in about her ankles first, and then climbing further until she’d been submerged to her waist before that ship came to rest on the razor sharp reef beneath it. The cold had taken her breath and made even her bones ache. The sensation was so real and so sharp in her mind, it was almost as if she was feeling it all over again.

  Abruptly, Adelaide turned away from the windows. With the sight of the water gone from her, those sensations faded as well. Moving to one of the heavily upholstered chairs, she sank down upon it and resisted the urge to rub her aching legs. How could a mere memory bring about such physical pain?

  A soft knock on the door interrupted her rather distressing thoughts and Adelaide gratefully bade the person enter. It was Dyllis carrying a basket of linens and other garments with a sewing box perched atop it. “Mr. Tromley asked me to bring this to you,” she said haltingly. “I don’t mind to do the sewing, miss. It doesn’t seem right for you, seeing as you’ll be lady of the house, to be mending shifts and aprons for servant girls!”

  “Thank you, Dyllis, but I asked Mr. Tromley for the task. I am not used to having so little of my time well occupied. I needed something to keep me busy… Tell me, are their children working on the estates? And do they have a school that they attend?”

  “There are, miss, but there’s no school. Most of them attend the village school until they’re old enough to work.”

  Adelaide shook her head, appalled at what she was hearing. She had been supportive of movements in the states to bring a halt to child labor. “Old enough to work… And how old is that precisely?”

  “The stable lads, some of them are about ten, I think. The boys what help in the gardens, they’re older. Twelve, I believe… I know that some folks in America have very strange ideas about children working. But his lordship is good to all of us what work for him. And if he didn’t employ those boys, heaven knows what sort of trouble they’d get up to trying to help for their mothers and their siblings. Most of them don’t have fathers you see. They’ve been killed, either in the wars or the mines, or they’ve just taken to the drink and wander off never to return. It’s a good thing, miss. I swear it is.”

>   Adelaide felt slightly ashamed of the snap judgement she’d made about Eldren and his employment of children. “You are very loyal to his lordship, Dyllis, and it is a credit to you. I will endeavor to be less judgmental and more open to the ways of doing things here rather than New York… Do you think the boys might like to have some sort of education beyond what they’ve already learned? So long as it did not interfere with their duties, perhaps I could spend some time in the afternoons teaching them.”

  Dyllis placed the basket before her. “I think some of them might. But I wouldn’t mention it to anyone until you’ve discussed it with his lordship first. Though he’s very fair and always encourages the lot of us to better ourselves if we can.”

  “Thank you, Dyllis. I’ll work on these until his lordship returns. You’ve been very kind and I do appreciate it.”

  The girl frowned then. “I don’t know why you ought to be appreciating kindness, miss. Seems to me you ought to be expecting it. But I’ll leave you to your sewing and ask one of the kitchen girls to bring you some tea to warm you while you work. I’ll be upstairs unpacking the rest of your things. They’ve arrived just a bit ago.”

  “There is an ivory velvet promenade gown… I know it might be scandalous, but no more scandalous than a bride in black. I mean to wear it for the ceremony on Saturday.”

  “Yes, miss. I’ll get it pressed for you… and I do believe it will be pretty as a picture.”

  Adelaide watched her go before inspecting the contents of the pretty little sewing box that had been brought in. Once she was certain she had all she needed, she began carefully mending each garment. The servants clothes were of sturdy fabrics and were well tended, that much was obvious. But it was near the bottom of the basket that she found one garment in particular that made her pause.

  It was a nightrail, delicately embroidered and of fine linen trimmed with satin ribbon. It obviously did not belong to a servant. She also couldn’t picture the very flamboyant Mrs. Frances Llewellyn wearing anything quite so prim. It also appeared that the garment had been all but shredded, the seams violently rent. It was unlikely, in fact, that the garment could even be saved.

  Replacing it with a frown and more curiosity than she cared to admit, Adelaide rose and walked once more to the windows. They went nearly floor to ceiling and swung outward. Experimentally she tried to open one. The latch was stubborn but eventually gave.

  Climbing through she came out onto a small terrace that ran the length of several rooms. Walking along it, the brisk air felt good against her skin and while looking at the sea left her feeling utterly terrified, there was something bracing in the air so close to it. At the end of the terrace, Adelaide turned, but as she did so, something caught her eye.

  She’d seen the hulking shape of the house on the night of her arrival, but the large tower was something of a surprise. All the windows in it must have been dark then or she would have seen it, surely. A holdover from a time when Cysgod Lys had been a fortified household, perhaps?

  As she examined that curious bit of architecture, she saw movement in one of the upper windows. A woman appeared there, her face white and slack with wild hair that formed a dark cloud about her head. There was something strange about her, otherworldly to be sure, but not at all ethereal. In fact, Adelaide found the woman’s presence to be utterly terrifying. Had that horribly torn and shredded nightrail in the basket belonged to her? And then she screamed—that same ghastly sound that Adelaide had heard the night before.

  Her heart thundered and she stepped backwards, horrified by what she’d seen and heard. Adelaide’s heel caught on one of the flagstones and she came down hard, her hip connecting sharply with a large planter filled with evergreen shrubbery. Her hands came down hard on the edge of the terrace, a sharp protrusion from one of the stones slicing into the flesh of her palm.

  With her uninjured hand, she rubbed her aching hip while examining the damage to her other hand. But as a tiny rivulet of blood dripped down her arm and splashed on the stone below, she heard it. That same whispering she’d heard on the moor her first night. It was far more faint, and yet it seemed impossibly near, as if it were happening right next to her ear though there wasn’t a soul about. Frightened, Adelaide looked around and that was when she saw it. The woman in the upstairs window was no longer staring blankly ahead. Her face was no longer slack. In fact she radiated tension as she looked directly at Adelaide with such hatred that it chilled her to her very core.

  Rising as quickly as her heavily boned corset permitted, Adelaide retreated to the safety of the morning room and wondered at the strange goings on in the home of her husband to be. What manner of mad house had she stumbled into?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Eldren had spent the better part of the morning in his office meeting with his solicitors. They had the signed documents from Hampton Parke’s attorneys in relation to Adelaide’s marriage settlement. It was generous. Remarkably so. A part of him recoiled at that, for he was not marrying her for money at all.

  “You’ve managed to get yourself quite the dollar princess, Lord Llewellyn, if I may say so,” the solicitor said with a greedy gleam in his eyes. He was the youngest member of the firm and was too familiar by far. The older gentleman who accompanied him appeared utterly mortified.

  “You may not say. And you may begin drawing up an additional agreement that Miss Hampton Parke and I shall both sign after our marriage takes place where the bulk of this is returned to her. I have no need of it and I will not be accused by you or anyone else of being a fortune hunter,” Eldren said, a decided snap to his tone.

  “I did not mean to give offense, my lord. I was merely remarking that there is a rash of international marriages of late and Miss Hampton Parke may in fact have many contemporaries living in London should she choose to be part of that social set… once an appropriate time period has passed, of course,” the younger man offered in faux apology.

  That had not been at all what the solicitor meant, but Eldren felt no need to rehash it. “If our business is concluded, gentlemen, I will bid you good day. I have much to attend to.”

  “Congratulations, my lord,” the older of the two said. “All of the paperwork is in order and the additional contract you requested will be drafted and sent to you by tomorrow afternoon. You said the bulk of her settlement, but did not specify an amount. I think to keep less than ten percent would be suspect and might cause more harm than good if such an arrangement were to become common knowledge or to be questioned later on.”

  There was some truth to that. It might be viewed as a breach of good faith with the trustees of her marriage settlement. Were it not for her stepmother, Muriel, and Eldren’s gut feeling that she would once more stir turmoil in Adelaide’s life, he might have risked it. But Murial was petty and she resented the love and affection Winston had held for his daughter as surely as she resented every last penny settled upon her. “Then I shall keep ten percent and donate it to a charity of Miss Hampton Parke’s choosing. Good day, sirs.”

  When they had gone, Eldren wasted no time in making his own escape. His mind was not on his work regardless. He found himself distracted by the coming conversation with his betrothed and how on earth he was to tell her what the peculiar nature of their marriage was to be and the dark and hideous secrets that would become her burden to share as his wife?

  Leaving his office, a simple building in the village where he kept most of his paperwork stored, he had similar buildings throughout Wales, a few in England and one in America, he walked to the livery stables and the coachman that waited there for him. He’d found that he accomplished a great deal more when he did not attempt to work from his home.

  The brief ride from the small village to the east of Cysgod Lys, nestled right at the base of the mountain, brought him home far more quickly than he would have liked. He dreaded the coming discussion much like a child dreaded facing a well earned punishment. Would she flee and never return? Would she be angry or, worse still, disappointed in
what her future held? Although more accurately, it would be a discussion of precisely what her future would not hold.

  All too soon, he was disembarking from the carriage and entering the house. His butler stood impassively in the foyer, as always looking utterly unperturbed. “Where is Miss Hampton Parke, Tromley?”

  “I believe she is in the morning room, my lord. She stepped out onto the terrace and had a bit of a fall. Dyllis is tending to her now.”

  “Was she hurt?” Eldren demanded.

  “As Miss Hampton Parke said, only her dignity, my lord. She did receive a bit of a nasty cut to her hand from the flag stones, however, and that is why Dyllis is with her, to bandage it properly. Otherwise, I believe she is quite well.”

  Eldren nodded and made his way toward the small morning room. Dyllis exited just as he neared it, bobbed a curtsy and then vanished into one of the many rabbit warren like corridors that allowed servants to move freely throughout the house. Entering the room, he found Adelaide seated on one of the settees, her hand bandaged and her brows furrowed as if she were deep in thought.

  “Tromley informed me you fell. You are not harmed more seriously than you let on, I hope.”

  She glanced up then. Her expression was curiously hard. Intractable even. “No. I’ll have a few bruises, I’m sure and a minor scrape or two. Nothing too severe. Shall we go for that walk now?”

  “Are you certain you are up to it?” he asked.

  Her eyes flashed in response. Anger, confusion, and something else he could not quite name were all there, vying for control. In the end, it was her sense of decorum that prevailed. “There are things you need to discuss with me that you do not wish to be overheard… and now I find that there are questions I must ask you that I also do not wish to be overheard. Whether I am up to it or not, I find that I am unwilling to wait longer for answers.”